sexagenarian-plus-one

Big day coming up this Saturday: I’m going to be LXI.

I can’t bear to write out the ‘real’ (i.e. Arabic) number, so you’ll just have to figure out my age from the Roman numeral.

* * *
I wonder how much my body has aged in the past year.

Last summer and fall, Performer used to tell me that I had ‘the body of a 25-year-old.’

Now, since the only female body he’d beheld in the past 27 years was his ugly wife’s (miaowwwwwww), I’m not sure how seriously I ought to take his compliment. If his biography is as he told it and my math is correct, the last time he saw and held a naked 25-year-old woman would have been 1961….But actually I think his first wife ran away from him when she was 23 or 24, and his next wife was about 27 when they met, so actually, maybe he never had a naked 25-year-old woman in his arms.

Well, so much for math.

* * *
But back to bodies:

Plan C keeps telling me — in high compliment mode — that I have ‘the body of a 30-year-old.’

!!!!!!!!!

* * *
Have I aged five years in six months??

* * *
I haven’t told Plan C about Performer’s estimate of my somatic age, and Plan C doesn’t read this blog, so he doesn’t know that his intended praise is actually a bit — well — let’s see — okay, let’s just say it gives me pause.

* * *
Then of course there’s my own sense of the changes — my bunion is bigger, my hair is thinner, and I ache after wiggling to the merinque. Two hours of dancing, and I can feel it in my hips.

And oh yes, my osteopenia has just become osteoperosis.

* * *

‘Somewhat too much of this.’

* * *

Let’s look on the bright side: I’m alive and I’m in love.

And this birthday is so very much better than last year’s.

Some people have Big Deals on their 60th: they invite everyone they know, all their friends and relatives, and they expect scrapbooks and gifts to charities in their honor and video cameras rolling or digital cameras clicking away while they blow out 60 candles on an enormous expensive cake.

* * *
Actually, I don’t know why I said that. I wasn’t invited to any 60th birthday parties! But I know they exist. A new friend once told me that if she had only met me sooner she would have invited me to her 60th, which was like the hypothetical one I described. She ran around to bakeries for weeks sampling different chocolate cakes.

And she couldn’t be the only one.

* * *

Well, it wasn’t like that for me.

Last year, on my 60th, I had a lousy cold, the last lousy one I’ve had. I was helping to run a conference that day, and I felt so exhausted that while the plenary speaker gave her talk, I — you won’t believe this, but it’s true — lay down and napped under the table with the hors d’oeuvres.

Let me clarify that sentence: the hors d’oeuvres were on the table and I was under the table.

It had a long tablecloth, so I wasn’t visible; and I knew the noise of the applause at the end of the talk would wake me up, as it did.

Really, there’s nothing like a loooooooooooong speech to put you to sleep nicely. Sometimes you don’t even have to be lying down in the dark, as I was.

* * *

I didn’t tell anyone at work it was my birthday. When I got home, my older child had very sweetly gotten presents for me to unwrap, and I opened a few presents and cards that friends had sent. And there were phone messages.

And that was it.

I didn’t feel up for any more, anyway. You can read the SATC Archives for March 2007 and see that not much was happening romantically either.

* * *
This year, of course, I have Plan C, who (I gather) got a present for me several weeks ago.

* * *
And Saturday’s a big day: Plan C is going to meet my children.

I’ve met his sons, one of them twice; and he has met my mother many times. They even have an email correspondence going.

But meeting my kids — that will be something else.

You remember how they suffered through Performer’s issues last Thanksgiving.

And now they have a new man to meet. They’ve heard about him, of course, but I didn’t feel in a rush to have them see him.

* * *
These are the plans (determined between my mother & self after a number of alternatives were vetted):
1) drinks for all of us — me, Plan C, my mother, my two children — in my apartment (which is btw where Plan C and I spend most of our weekends);
2) dinner at the restaurant where Plan C and I had our first date — not for that reason, but because it will be easy for my mother: a) it’s close by and b) you can actually hear conversations there.
Then
3) back to my apartment for cake, which my mother will be bringing with her.

* * *

Plan C is organizing a big Seder at his house this year, with his sons and their girlfriends, and he wants to ask my family. I’ve told him I think the best time will be over cake, when we’re back at my apartment, because (I hope) things will be mellow then. I know my mother will want to go, and I’m hoping my children will, but they won’t if they feel pressured. Somehow a time towards the end of the evening seems best. I think their resistance will be lower then; and yes, I do expect a little resistance, but Plan C is very charming, irresistibly charming, I like to think.

So I hope they say yes.

* * *

Meanwhile, I have lots of work to do (yes, I have a life!), and will have to be working most of Saturday and Sunday. But Plan C will be around, and that will help me concentrate, because his presence is an inspiration to get things done faster.

* * *
So fingers crossed that Plan C’s meeting with my kids goes well….

They’re always polite (well, almost); but will they like him?

* * *

Stay tuned.

Explore posts in the same categories: Plan C, bodies, families (oy), first-date restaurants, my mother